Dear tiny lantern:

You wrote above that you were afraid that he would walk away from you. Is it like your mother walking away from you, when you were a child, and staying in her room all day, leaving you alone- is it that hurt, fear?

anita

Dear tiny lantern:

Will you go back to the beginning of this thread, re-read our communications, as calmly as you can, take notes of things that pick your interest, seeds of possible insight and get back to me then, with your thoughts and feelings?

anita

Dear tiny lantern:

I am glad you are back.

It will be a very poor choice for you to confront your mother, not now, not ever. If you confront her you will get the same results you got already, which you listed: she will get upset at you, blame you, get angry at you and deny everything. Just like you wrote. And as you indicated, as a result of such a confrontation, you will feel even worse about yourself, and she may very well use your words against you later.

Your last sentence above is: “I don’t want to share and open up with anyone who could then reject and leave me”- that is understandable. This is why it would be a poor choice to share (confront) with your mother. She will reject and emotionally abandon you just like she did before.

And this is key: healing from her emotional abandonment of you, you must give up on receiving emotional support and understanding from her. Give up on hoping for that- this hope will bring you nothing but more misery.

As you give up the hope of emotional attention, support and respect from your mother, you will be open to evaluate men for this very thing: is a particular man emotionally attentive, supportive and respectful to you (unlike your mother) or is he inattentive, rejecting and disrespectful to you (like your mother)?

Next, you stay away from relationships with the second group of men and carefully (evaluating over time), enter a relationship with a man of the first group. It will be scary, so you will need to do it slowly, carefully, opening up bit by bit, and evaluating the responses you get, over time.

It is difficult for a child, and an adult child, to be aware that one’s own mother has been and is rejecting. And then, to give up trying. But it needs to be done.

I hope you post again, anytime you are ready and willing.

anita

Dear tiny lantern:

It is very possible to know when someone is lying to you-

You may not be ready now, to figure out if he will be lying to you or not. Maybe later, when you are more ready.

You wrote that if you confronted your mother with the truth, she would deny everything- that means she would be lying. Are you ready to see your own mother as one who lies?

It is when you are ready to see your own mother as one who has lied to you, repeatedly (as painful as it is), that you will be able to trust the truth and then, you will be able to figure out who is lying to you and who is not (in most cases and to a great extent).

The truth: you were a lovable, loving child. Your mother rejected you because she was not a loving person, not because you were not worthy of love.

Will be back in six hours or so.

anita

Dear tiny lantern:

You mentioned psychotherapists in your original thread, that you saw a few and one psychiatrist- were you involved in any therapy? Any insight in the sessions with those therapists and the psychiatrist?

Do you think it is a good idea if you do see a competent psychotherapist?

anita

Dear tiny lantern:

I re-read all your posts on this thread so to refresh my mind and formulate my thoughts best I can. I will state my thoughts simply and directly, confidently, but these are all subject to your evaluation:

You had a very sad, lonely childhood with “high performance” parents, nannies, household staff, “prestige”, but lots of alone time with a mother who was absent physically and emotionally. I am supposing your father was busy making money and still he is not the “listener type”. You witnessed an unhealthy marriage between the two, as your mother was never satisfied with all his efforts to please her, and still currently, she is dissatisfied: “she accuses him because his family was so jealous of her…”

You were understandably so lonely, so lacking attention, that when you were 18, and a man “became violent and threw me on the floor. I was so desperate that I was actually happy for the attention I received.”

You were alone, lonely and lacking attention as a child. This is why you craved an intimate relationship with a man from a very early age, but so far in your life, being 30, failed to experience such (title of your thread).

In your thread you stated a few things that are untrue: that you have “strong and healthy family ties”- not with your mother, who is the most powerful part of your family in having formed you (as in those “formative years” of childhood). You wrote: “If I would confront my mother with my feelings… she would blame me, get angry and deny everything… would use the things I said against me”- this is not a “strong and healthy” family tie.

You stated: “everyone else in my family happily married”- this is untrue as well. Your parents have not and are not happily married.

And you wrote that you are “living a happy life”- not so happy, I am thinking.

I understand your feelings about the therapists you encountered. I have no idea about their competence (many therapists and other professionals are not competent). I am not a therapist and I have no desire to suggest a diagnosis. I see diagnoses of very little value, these are clusters of symptoms when the root causes, the root problems are much simpler.

What is see as the problem responsible for you being “30 and still alone” (title of your thread) is that in your interactions with men, including a decent man (last one, reads to me), you share untruths (as you did here), hide the truths; you are unreachable, unapproachable. You want commitment from a man without making yourself known to the man.

I think you were and are exposed to a mother who denies the truth a lot, and as you wrote, lies (intentionally or not). And you too, you deny the truth a lot, lie, intentionally or not.

If I was you, first thing I would do, is to accept the truths of your life and stay with those truths. Keep your good job, your effective functioning professionally and socially, but become truthful in most or all of your personal interactions. The root problem is fear, anxiety about being rejected. But the rejection already happened to you, from an early age and for many years.

To experience acceptance, attention, love- open up bit by bit to a man who you evaluate to be decent. The opening up and evaluating should take time and awareness.

And practice being truthful in most, if not all personal relationships.

anita